“a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that _their claim is indefeasible_. It is due to landowners, and to owners of any property whatever recognised as such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value.... This is due on the _general principles on which property rests_. If the land was bought with the produce of the labour and abstinence of themselves or their ancestors, compensation is due to them on that ground; _even if otherwise_, it is still due on the ground of prescription.” “Nor,” he adds, “can it ever be necessary for accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that a particular portion of the community should be immolated.”[62] Unfortunately, however, his mischievous denial of the sacred rights of property in land is eagerly read, while his subsequent qualification of it is neglected by those who, like Mr. Bright, aim at the destruction of a political opponent; or, like Mr. Gladstone, are bent on a particular policy, reckless of the results in carrying it out; or, like Mr. Parnell and his followers, whose hands itch for plunder; and it has produced a general haziness of ideas amongst that well-meaning class of people who are good-naturedly liberal with the property of other people. Yet, clothe it with what sophism you will, any attempt, whether legalized or otherwise, to deprive the landowner of his property and to violate his rights, is as unjustifiable as the depredations of the burglar or the pickpocket. Nay more so; because the statesman or political economist cannot plead poverty or want of education as his excuse. FOOTNOTES: [56] If we were to partition out England into a Mill’s Utopia of peasant proprietors to-morrow, it would not last a week; half of the proprietors would convert their holdings into drink, and be in a state of intoxication until it was expended. [57] ‘Grande and Petite Culture. Rural Economy of France.’ De Lavergne. [58] The yeomen and small tenant-farmers, men of little capital, have almost disappeared, and the process of improving them off the face of the agricultural world is still progressing to its bitter end; homestead after homestead has been deserted, and farm has been added to farm--a very unpleasing result of the inexorable principle--the survival of the fittest--by means of which even the cultivators of the soil are selected;--but a result which, not the laws of nature, but the bungling arrangements of human legislators, have rendered inevitable. (Bear., _Fortnightly Review_, September, 1873.) [59] ‘Mill’s Political Economy,’ Bk. II. Chap. II.